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I worked at Google for quite a while, 2005-2013, and even then, the internal political discussion was pretty toxic, but a lot smaller in scope since there are f

I worked at Google for quite a while, 2005-2013, and even then, the internal political discussion was pretty toxic, but a lot smaller in scope since there are far fewer people. There were definitely groups meant for discussing politics, and loudmouths like me willingly participated in those - however, it was very uncivil. There was a majority view in the company, and if anyone didn't agree with the majority view, the majority engaged in heckling, ridicule, etc. It was already becoming an echo chamber, and as the majority grew, their tactics grew more petty and vicious. However, this was expected in the politics groups, and you knowingly entered that fray. What seems to be happening a lot lately is that politics are spilling over into large, global mailing lists which target a whole geographic region, so many people get involved, and when a company has 200k employees and contractors, you will find some outliers in there who will pick nasty fights. It only makes sense that they're cutting down on something that has turned toxic. It's a bit disappointing to hear, since I personally enjoyed the occasional, honest discussion with smart people of other viewpoints - these good discussions made the much larger number of ridiculous ones, bearable.

duxup 7y ago
Help me out here. Do you mean "internal political" as "Oh man Jimmy is in charge of gmail now!" (just a made up example of internal politics there) or "Can you belive what the POTUS did!?!?!"? If the latter, I'm a bit surprised ... I can't imagine having that kind of conversation at work. That is absolutely a NO GO zone for me at work.
- username90 7y ago
  It is the second kind, and in addition to the multitude of dedicated political discussion boards it is also very popular at the social forums like memegen and google plus. I was a bit shocked by this when I started but I got used to it, now I just filter it out.
- lreeves 7y ago
  I understand your perspective but I'm honestly very surprised given your example. I'm in Canada and the things Trump does and says are still present in conversations nearly every day.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  - duxup 7y ago
    >I'm in Canada and the things Trump does and says are still present in conversations nearly every day. I'm not sure what you mean but generally in my life... I actually don't have a lot of "political" conversations every day. More often than not, none at all.
    - tjoff 7y ago
      Well, when discussing Trump there typically is no politics involved anyway.
    - lreeves 7y ago
      As in simply something like going to the dentist or getting a haircut, politics comes up because at least in my lifetime and most peoples there's never been a President (and certainly not Prime Minister in Canada) doing the things that Trump is doing. Peoples lives, families and affairs have been affected for many who travel to the United States as an example and the discussions of what he's saying and doing permeate work and non-work environments.
  - refurb 7y ago
    I believe it. I was always amazed that Canadians seemed more interested in US politics than their own politics.
    - JabavuAdams 7y ago
      We're bombarded with it 24/7. It also seems weirder and therefore more notable. Canadian politics is boring by comparison.
- dmitrygr 7y ago
  The latter was very common (googler 2012-2019)
- oppositelock 7y ago
  Definitely the latter - people trying to convince others that their views on war, or abortion, or taxes, or political party are the correct ones. These are also people who are intelligent, educated, and quite arrogant, so the fireworks were pretty spectacular.
  - duxup 7y ago
    I gotta admit I'd take a peek too to watch the fireworks. But also a bit shocked how many people feel that participating is a good idea.
    - derefr 7y ago
      I'd maybe participate if it was some kind of... workplace-internal 4chan. An anonymous forum, but only available through an Enterprise SSO gateway. Otherwise, yeah, that seems crazy.
      - duxup 7y ago
        Many moons ago I worked for a company that did some outsource work for another company who asked for responses to an anonymous survey. So I responded. 1. I shouldn't have gotten the survey as I didn't work for the company who sent it, but nobody at either company was very smart or careful because it went to everyone. 2. I misread the email and didn't notice it wasn't my company asking for responses it was the company we did outsource work for. I made some pretty tepid constructive criticism. So did a couple other people. The next day we were in a conference room with people we never met before angry that we responded to the survey. They hadn't realized we were actually sent the email just like everyone at the company (like I said these were not smart people) ... It also raised the question about how anonymous this survey was. Of course it wasn't, you could see in the URL when responding your name, email address, etc ;)
        Aeolun 7y ago
        I believe saying ‘this survey is anonymous’ should be illegal if it really isn’t.
- microtherion 7y ago
  I try to keep the latter out of work-related mail, slack, etc, but I've had plenty of political discussions over coffee and lunch, and nobody ever seemed any the worse off for it. I suspect an important factor is that these happen in smaller groups that know each other better, beyond individual views. I was appalled that one of my foreign born, non-Christian, non-Caucasian co-workers voted for Bush 43 and listened to Rush Limbaugh, but having known him for years, I did not reduce him to that single aspect of his life.
  - ci5er 7y ago
    Your observation that small groups that are already friends having differing points of view does not make them "the other" in your mind, may well be the opposite of (Political) Twitter, which may well be why that ends up being such a dumpster fire. Q: You mention that you were 'appalled'. Did either of you take the time to explore your presumptions behind your reasons for coming to differing conclusions (while realizing the humans are 'rationalizing creatures', not 'rational creatures')?
    - microtherion 7y ago
      Good question. We discussed this a bit, and my impression was that he (a) had somewhat negative opinions of muslims in general (although he got along fine with muslim co-workers — again, the phenomenon of knowing somebody protecting against "othering" them) (b) did not hold his political views very strongly, but partially saw politics as entertainment (he also listened to Michael Savage) (c) somewhat felt that when Limbaugh and Savage trashed foreigners, they could not possibly mean him.
      - ci5er 7y ago
        Thanks for the detailed and sincere response. I apologize upfront for not knowing who Mike Savage is, but it is my understanding that Limbaugh (who I don't listen to, so I could be wrong) is a guy that rudely declares that we should enforce border policies as written into regulations written by Congress? That may not be true, but if it is, is that wrong-headed? Edit: I have many loving/giving Muslim friends, and without their help I would not be alive today, but I am somewhat afraid of their "extremists" when I travel to Pakistan, or Qatar. I don't think I'm a hater, but maybe I am?
mieseratte 7y ago
> What seems to be happening a lot lately is that politics are spilling over into large, global mailing lists Interestingly there are people in this very thread claiming "everything is politics."
- brodouevencode 7y ago
  Hilariously too, they're agreeing with Rush Limbaugh: https://www.rushlimbaugh.com/daily/2014/08/05/everything_is_political/ https://www.rushlimbaugh.com/daily/2014/08/05/everything_is_...
  - joshuamorton 7y ago
    No they're agreeing with early 20th century communist theorists like Marx. The left has always biased toward the idea that social interaction is politics. And "politics" is just the micro social politics playing out on a grander scale. It's just easier to ignore those things when you're in (relative) power, since, as a straight person, you aren't directly affected by the ability of gay people to marry, or whatever. Limbaugh was just agreeing with the communists. Oops?
    - philshem 7y ago
      Not sure why your comment is getting down voted.
stcredzero 7y ago
I worked at Google for quite a while, 2005-2013, and even then, the internal political discussion was pretty toxic, but a lot smaller in scope since there are far fewer people. It sounds like the work culture at Google has rediscovered the emergent factors which gave rise to the traditional cultural strictures against talking about money, politics, and religion. Good science is repeatable. Given that Google is arguably an intellectually friendly environment, where more people than average understand how to talk in ways that get closer to truth, the inadvertent experiment conducted by Google over the past 15 years or so should hold a lot of weight. It only makes sense that they're cutting down on something that has turned toxic. It's a bit disappointing to hear, since I personally enjoyed the occasional, honest discussion with smart people of other viewpoints - these good discussions made the much larger number of ridiculous ones, bearable. It sounds like the overall cost-benefit tradeoff supports Google corporate's decision. (There were externalities beyond the discussions themselves.)
- ChuckMcM 7y ago
  My tenure overlapped ('06 - '10) and the discussions were lively. There were (and probably still are) interesting meta-terms like 'centathread' which was a topic that had received >= 100 replies (the gmail threading limit at the time). That said, the change in policy (what is cited at least) reads a bit like "Let's create air cover for management actions to separate trouble makers from the company." Where trouble makers has enough vagueness in it to cover a wide swath of things. That allows for 'for cause' termination which is more financially advantageous to the company than simply laying someone off. So to the extent that Google didn't want to be a 'traditional' company with all its rules and opaque policies and structures, it clearly is learning through experience the motivations that companies have for establishing those sorts of rules. What I find disappointing is that after reproducing the experiment and getting the same results, they aren't able to come up with any other solution than the centuries old authoritarian one. I feel like they missed an opportunity here.
  - SllX 7y ago
    There’s a decent chance this centuries old authoritarian method, which is more like millennia old, is actually the best way of dealing with it. Humans are more or less the same as a few millennia ago. Our technology is more advanced, we’ve more or less covered every corner of the planet, we have birthed billions of humans and built millions of organizations of every stripe, and dealt with as many management issues as there were and are people. We haven’t significantly advanced in our cognitive capabilities, we’ve just learned how to outsource more to experts and computers. If there’s one difference between us and us a few millennia ago, it would be that there are so many more humans on the planet that we probably don’t have a role in society for everyone. Under, e.g. a feudal System, every person had a functional role, and those that didn’t could at least point a spear in more or less the correct orientation. Vagrants of course were prosecuted and often pressed into service doing something somewhere for somebody. In 2018, Google had ~99K full time employees. That’s larger than most cities, and historically, most countries. At that scale, you eventually need to tell most of them sit down, shut up and fall in line. Check their problems at the door, and if they really really need to fight about something, do it off premises on their off time without company resources, just to keep the peace.
turk73 7y ago
I'm guessing they aren't conservatives or anarcho capitalists.
Diederich 7y ago
May I ask: how much did that environment contribute to you deciding to leave in 2013?
jgunsch 7y ago
I worked there for a similar length of time, but more recent (2012 - early 2019). The internal political discourse over that time definitely mirrored the rest of the world: becoming increasingly heated and divisive during 2016 and largely escalating since. On the whole, it felt like it pushed the company in a positive direction --- internal discussions mirroring #metoo led to more visibility of sexual harassment and accountability for leadership. The discourse around the James Damore memo, as divisive as it was, felt like it still led to a broader understanding of the negative perspectives women in tech had to deal with constantly. Most importantly (IMO), Google's product choices and politics are not inseparable --- Google is far too large and influential to pretend otherwise, and discussing these topics acted as a watchdog of sorts. Internal discussions about a potential censored search engine product in China resulted in pressure on leadership to change course, and pressure on Cloud bidding on the JEDI contract led to Google withdrawing from that bid. Shutting off that political discourse feels like it'd be a huge blow to "oversight" from concerned Googlers --- particularly the ones who felt it was worth staying and using their influence internally to push Google toward creating a more just world.
- LordFast 7y ago
  Disclaimer: my comment below is directed at the culture of Google, and following in the train of thought from your comment. It's not directed at your comment or you. Reading this comment just makes me feel baffled. How much arrogance does it take for a bunch of Googlers to assume the belief that they know what is "just" for the rest of the world? An organization(in this case, a for-profit company) created to deliver products and services to consumers and advertisers playing politics on the world stage is laughable at best, and downright irresponsible at worst. There's no framework established within the confines of a corporation to deal with any of these sorts of social problems, and it shouldn't. Play the right part, do the right job, and let others with the right skills and tools do the same.
  - lmpostor 7y ago
    > How much arrogance does it take for a bunch of Googlers to assume the belief that they know what is "just" for the rest of the world? That of a regular human being with rationalized opinions through the lens available to them? For some reason only because Google has a lot of power to control the dialogue you ask them to bury their head in the sand? Or are we going to pretend that there hasn't been an arms race of sorts to game search results across nearly every topic and as such one might consider removal of what one considers to either be harmful, false, or manipulative to be a part of doing the "right" job? What's the quote again, " The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing " -- Edmund Burke And as far as Google goes, I think it would be easy to rationalize that (if I was a Google member) I have access to better tools than most to make a decision (more information).
jshowa3 7y ago
In most states, political discussion in the work place is considered illegal. California has some odd laws though that protect people from this.
- larvaetron 7y ago
  In which states? I've never heard of an instance where any state legislature passed a rule that forbids employees from discussing politics. I'm surprised there wouldn't be massive outrage over it.
- SamReidHughes 7y ago
  Two odd laws, actually. The federal and state constitutions.
- MFLoon 7y ago
  I think you're confused. It's definitely not illegal in any state to have informal political discussions with coworkers. Maybe what you're referring to is that it's illegal for employers to tell employees to vote a certain a way or retaliate against them for holding certain political views.
  - jshowa3 7y ago
    Only in some states is this legally protected. If a private company allows it, then there is no problem. However, most private companies don't allow political discussion and it's not illegal to control this unless you live in certain states, California being one of them. Explanation in detail here: https://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/can-employers-discriminate-based-on-political-beliefs-or-affiliation.html https://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/can-employers-discri...
- jshowa3 7y ago
  Let me make my statement a little bit more clear. There is no federal law that prevents employer discrimination based on political beliefs. There are some states, specifically California in this case, that prevent employers from discrimination based on political activities and/or affiliations. However, most states prevent employers from controlling political activities outside of work The First Amendment does not apply to private institutions, only public ones. Private institutions can outright ban political discussion with no repercussions and cannot be liable for termination on the grounds of political beliefs expressed within the workplace sans some states. So while it isn't "illegal", it can be restricted within private companies.
techrich 7y ago
Sounds like children to me.
tunesmith 7y ago
Some people can handle civil discussion with people of differing values, and some people can't. I wonder what the difference is, I mean beyond just painting someone who can't as a jerk. I think it has to do with learned skills of emotional self-regulation... someone with those skills is better able to hold their perspective while allowing that of another. But how does one learn that? It might have to do with safety. I suspect that the people that are better able to have those kind of civil discussions have had good behavior modeled to them in the past, that has increased their own sense of safety, like from someone else in a position of power that has demonstrably respected their opinion even when they held different values. Could that be the krux of it, that most "uncivil behavior" in this realm is from people that are reacting from a sense of danger, like that if they meet a person with differing values they automatically believe they are being threatened? (Recognizing that sometimes that belief is correct.) I also wonder if there's a universal central reason behind why it is important to understand someone else's argument if their conclusion differs than yours.
- gm678 7y ago
  While I absolutely agree that there are people of all political beliefs who have major problems with remaining civil, I think we sometimes have an unfair standard. If someone is dealing with people who just want to spread hate and have no interest in having an open-minded discussion or ever changing their views, and that person then betrays even a hint of frustration, they are often immediately slammed for becoming impolite and uncivil. (Note: I'm not saying there's no line here, just that I believe the line is sometimes drawn in the wrong place). However, the person being toxic is often not criticized at all because they were spreading their hateful views "politely," if such a thing is possible. So while I believe there is nothing to be gained from getting angry in a political discussion, I do think we should give people a bit of a break if they understandably become frustrated when dealing with actual white nationalists/neo-Nazis/incels saying rape should be legal/etc.
  - lagadu 7y ago
    It boils down to whether they believe that all ideas are worth having, discussing about and of equal value to a "free" society and should therefore be openly discussed or whether only their specific subset of ideas are allowed and everything else thought-crime. Hell, believe it or not, I've heard people say that it should be illegal to be fascist for example. Of course these people should be ridiculed.
pkaye 7y ago
What has your experience been in places outside of Google? I've worked in a couple of non-FAANG companies over the years and politics never enters into the conversation. People just agree not to discuss controversial political stuff except may out over a beer or something.
avocado4 7y ago
The toxic echo chamber was one of the worst things about working at Google. The pinnacle was being peer forced to walk out during one of the recent outrage events - how can you possibly be the only person on the team to not walk out? To make things worse, you find yourself stuck in public expected to chant anti-capitalist, anti-police, and anti-male slurs during what was supposed to be a #MeToo march, which felt absolutely gross. The fact that they are starting to crack down on this toxic environment is long overdue. My guess is that they are starting to see tangible attrition of top performers (who happen to be predominantly white & asian males) quoting this as a reason to leave, which threatens their existence. Hence the change.
heroHACK17 7y ago
> What seems to be happening a lot lately is that politics are spilling over into large, global mailing lists which target a whole geographic region, so many people get involved, and when a company has 200k employees and contractors, you will find some outliers in there who will pick nasty fights. Really good point here. One could argue the same for society as a whole - not just companies with global mailing lists.
ljm 7y ago
That seems largely fair enough. I’ve pushed back before on conversations that make an assumption about the audience, suggesting to redirect them to the place where people have explicitly opted into that kind of stuff. In that sense it’s not really about the politics, it’s just seeing the world outside of your own. In almost every other case we’re okay with this. In a lot of contexts irrelevant discussion is called ‘taking it offline’.
grumpy8 7y ago
>> It's a bit disappointing to hear, since I personally enjoyed the occasional, honest discussion with smart people That can still happen, maybe just not on a huge mailing list? :p
cosmodisk 7y ago
I'd say the same would happen in pretty much every other company. Political discussions are very hard to have outside work and it is 10 times worse at it. Most of the time it's either echo chamber or free ride for all without any considerations.
t34543 7y ago
Discussing politics at work is a huge liability. With the recent surge of outrage culture I’m not willing to put my job on the line to prove a point. I engage in discussion, but only online and anonymously.
- Aqua 7y ago
  This doesn't sound like freedom, look what the western society turned into. Interesting times we live in.
  - seattle_spring 7y ago
    Similar argument to people that think they should be allowed to smoke anywhere. I can't stand people that talk about politics. It's worse noise pollution than that scene from Dumb and Dumber (hey Lloyd, want to hear the most annoying sound in the world?) I'm sorry, but I don't think having to listen to co-workers ram their ill-thought-out opinion down my throat is "freedom."
- foolrush 7y ago
  Your ability to create the ontology of “What is political” versus “What is not political” classification is one of privilege. “Food isn’t political” is only “not political” for someone who is well fed and not concerned about where their next meal is coming from. Everything is political.

duxup 7y ago

Help me out here. Do you mean "internal political" as "Oh man Jimmy is in charge of gmail now!" (just a made up example of internal politics there) or "Can you belive what the POTUS did!?!?!"? If the latter, I'm a bit surprised ... I can't imagine having that kind of conversation at work. That is absolutely a NO GO zone for me at work.

username90 7y ago
It is the second kind, and in addition to the multitude of dedicated political discussion boards it is also very popular at the social forums like memegen and google plus. I was a bit shocked by this when I started but I got used to it, now I just filter it out.
lreeves 7y ago
I understand your perspective but I'm honestly very surprised given your example. I'm in Canada and the things Trump does and says are still present in conversations nearly every day.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- duxup 7y ago
  >I'm in Canada and the things Trump does and says are still present in conversations nearly every day. I'm not sure what you mean but generally in my life... I actually don't have a lot of "political" conversations every day. More often than not, none at all.
  - tjoff 7y ago
    Well, when discussing Trump there typically is no politics involved anyway.
  - lreeves 7y ago
    As in simply something like going to the dentist or getting a haircut, politics comes up because at least in my lifetime and most peoples there's never been a President (and certainly not Prime Minister in Canada) doing the things that Trump is doing. Peoples lives, families and affairs have been affected for many who travel to the United States as an example and the discussions of what he's saying and doing permeate work and non-work environments.
- refurb 7y ago
  I believe it. I was always amazed that Canadians seemed more interested in US politics than their own politics.
  - JabavuAdams 7y ago
    We're bombarded with it 24/7. It also seems weirder and therefore more notable. Canadian politics is boring by comparison.
dmitrygr 7y ago
The latter was very common (googler 2012-2019)
oppositelock 7y ago
Definitely the latter - people trying to convince others that their views on war, or abortion, or taxes, or political party are the correct ones. These are also people who are intelligent, educated, and quite arrogant, so the fireworks were pretty spectacular.
- duxup 7y ago
  I gotta admit I'd take a peek too to watch the fireworks. But also a bit shocked how many people feel that participating is a good idea.
  - derefr 7y ago
    I'd maybe participate if it was some kind of... workplace-internal 4chan. An anonymous forum, but only available through an Enterprise SSO gateway. Otherwise, yeah, that seems crazy.
    - duxup 7y ago
      Many moons ago I worked for a company that did some outsource work for another company who asked for responses to an anonymous survey. So I responded. 1. I shouldn't have gotten the survey as I didn't work for the company who sent it, but nobody at either company was very smart or careful because it went to everyone. 2. I misread the email and didn't notice it wasn't my company asking for responses it was the company we did outsource work for. I made some pretty tepid constructive criticism. So did a couple other people. The next day we were in a conference room with people we never met before angry that we responded to the survey. They hadn't realized we were actually sent the email just like everyone at the company (like I said these were not smart people) ... It also raised the question about how anonymous this survey was. Of course it wasn't, you could see in the URL when responding your name, email address, etc ;)
      - Aeolun 7y ago
        I believe saying ‘this survey is anonymous’ should be illegal if it really isn’t.
microtherion 7y ago
I try to keep the latter out of work-related mail, slack, etc, but I've had plenty of political discussions over coffee and lunch, and nobody ever seemed any the worse off for it. I suspect an important factor is that these happen in smaller groups that know each other better, beyond individual views. I was appalled that one of my foreign born, non-Christian, non-Caucasian co-workers voted for Bush 43 and listened to Rush Limbaugh, but having known him for years, I did not reduce him to that single aspect of his life.
- ci5er 7y ago
  Your observation that small groups that are already friends having differing points of view does not make them "the other" in your mind, may well be the opposite of (Political) Twitter, which may well be why that ends up being such a dumpster fire. Q: You mention that you were 'appalled'. Did either of you take the time to explore your presumptions behind your reasons for coming to differing conclusions (while realizing the humans are 'rationalizing creatures', not 'rational creatures')?
  - microtherion 7y ago
    Good question. We discussed this a bit, and my impression was that he (a) had somewhat negative opinions of muslims in general (although he got along fine with muslim co-workers — again, the phenomenon of knowing somebody protecting against "othering" them) (b) did not hold his political views very strongly, but partially saw politics as entertainment (he also listened to Michael Savage) (c) somewhat felt that when Limbaugh and Savage trashed foreigners, they could not possibly mean him.
    - ci5er 7y ago
      Thanks for the detailed and sincere response. I apologize upfront for not knowing who Mike Savage is, but it is my understanding that Limbaugh (who I don't listen to, so I could be wrong) is a guy that rudely declares that we should enforce border policies as written into regulations written by Congress? That may not be true, but if it is, is that wrong-headed? Edit: I have many loving/giving Muslim friends, and without their help I would not be alive today, but I am somewhat afraid of their "extremists" when I travel to Pakistan, or Qatar. I don't think I'm a hater, but maybe I am?

mieseratte 7y ago

> What seems to be happening a lot lately is that politics are spilling over into large, global mailing lists Interestingly there are people in this very thread claiming "everything is politics."

brodouevencode 7y ago
Hilariously too, they're agreeing with Rush Limbaugh: https://www.rushlimbaugh.com/daily/2014/08/05/everything_is_political/ https://www.rushlimbaugh.com/daily/2014/08/05/everything_is_...
- joshuamorton 7y ago
  No they're agreeing with early 20th century communist theorists like Marx. The left has always biased toward the idea that social interaction is politics. And "politics" is just the micro social politics playing out on a grander scale. It's just easier to ignore those things when you're in (relative) power, since, as a straight person, you aren't directly affected by the ability of gay people to marry, or whatever. Limbaugh was just agreeing with the communists. Oops?
  - philshem 7y ago
    Not sure why your comment is getting down voted.

stcredzero 7y ago

I worked at Google for quite a while, 2005-2013, and even then, the internal political discussion was pretty toxic, but a lot smaller in scope since there are far fewer people. It sounds like the work culture at Google has rediscovered the emergent factors which gave rise to the traditional cultural strictures against talking about money, politics, and religion. Good science is repeatable. Given that Google is arguably an intellectually friendly environment, where more people than average understand how to talk in ways that get closer to truth, the inadvertent experiment conducted by Google over the past 15 years or so should hold a lot of weight. It only makes sense that they're cutting down on something that has turned toxic. It's a bit disappointing to hear, since I personally enjoyed the occasional, honest discussion with smart people of other viewpoints - these good discussions made the much larger number of ridiculous ones, bearable. It sounds like the overall cost-benefit tradeoff supports Google corporate's decision. (There were externalities beyond the discussions themselves.)

ChuckMcM 7y ago
My tenure overlapped ('06 - '10) and the discussions were lively. There were (and probably still are) interesting meta-terms like 'centathread' which was a topic that had received >= 100 replies (the gmail threading limit at the time). That said, the change in policy (what is cited at least) reads a bit like "Let's create air cover for management actions to separate trouble makers from the company." Where trouble makers has enough vagueness in it to cover a wide swath of things. That allows for 'for cause' termination which is more financially advantageous to the company than simply laying someone off. So to the extent that Google didn't want to be a 'traditional' company with all its rules and opaque policies and structures, it clearly is learning through experience the motivations that companies have for establishing those sorts of rules. What I find disappointing is that after reproducing the experiment and getting the same results, they aren't able to come up with any other solution than the centuries old authoritarian one. I feel like they missed an opportunity here.
- SllX 7y ago
  There’s a decent chance this centuries old authoritarian method, which is more like millennia old, is actually the best way of dealing with it. Humans are more or less the same as a few millennia ago. Our technology is more advanced, we’ve more or less covered every corner of the planet, we have birthed billions of humans and built millions of organizations of every stripe, and dealt with as many management issues as there were and are people. We haven’t significantly advanced in our cognitive capabilities, we’ve just learned how to outsource more to experts and computers. If there’s one difference between us and us a few millennia ago, it would be that there are so many more humans on the planet that we probably don’t have a role in society for everyone. Under, e.g. a feudal System, every person had a functional role, and those that didn’t could at least point a spear in more or less the correct orientation. Vagrants of course were prosecuted and often pressed into service doing something somewhere for somebody. In 2018, Google had ~99K full time employees. That’s larger than most cities, and historically, most countries. At that scale, you eventually need to tell most of them sit down, shut up and fall in line. Check their problems at the door, and if they really really need to fight about something, do it off premises on their off time without company resources, just to keep the peace.

turk73 7y ago

I'm guessing they aren't conservatives or anarcho capitalists.

Diederich 7y ago

May I ask: how much did that environment contribute to you deciding to leave in 2013?

jgunsch 7y ago

I worked there for a similar length of time, but more recent (2012 - early 2019). The internal political discourse over that time definitely mirrored the rest of the world: becoming increasingly heated and divisive during 2016 and largely escalating since. On the whole, it felt like it pushed the company in a positive direction --- internal discussions mirroring #metoo led to more visibility of sexual harassment and accountability for leadership. The discourse around the James Damore memo, as divisive as it was, felt like it still led to a broader understanding of the negative perspectives women in tech had to deal with constantly. Most importantly (IMO), Google's product choices and politics are not inseparable --- Google is far too large and influential to pretend otherwise, and discussing these topics acted as a watchdog of sorts. Internal discussions about a potential censored search engine product in China resulted in pressure on leadership to change course, and pressure on Cloud bidding on the JEDI contract led to Google withdrawing from that bid. Shutting off that political discourse feels like it'd be a huge blow to "oversight" from concerned Googlers --- particularly the ones who felt it was worth staying and using their influence internally to push Google toward creating a more just world.

LordFast 7y ago
Disclaimer: my comment below is directed at the culture of Google, and following in the train of thought from your comment. It's not directed at your comment or you. Reading this comment just makes me feel baffled. How much arrogance does it take for a bunch of Googlers to assume the belief that they know what is "just" for the rest of the world? An organization(in this case, a for-profit company) created to deliver products and services to consumers and advertisers playing politics on the world stage is laughable at best, and downright irresponsible at worst. There's no framework established within the confines of a corporation to deal with any of these sorts of social problems, and it shouldn't. Play the right part, do the right job, and let others with the right skills and tools do the same.
- lmpostor 7y ago
  > How much arrogance does it take for a bunch of Googlers to assume the belief that they know what is "just" for the rest of the world? That of a regular human being with rationalized opinions through the lens available to them? For some reason only because Google has a lot of power to control the dialogue you ask them to bury their head in the sand? Or are we going to pretend that there hasn't been an arms race of sorts to game search results across nearly every topic and as such one might consider removal of what one considers to either be harmful, false, or manipulative to be a part of doing the "right" job? What's the quote again, " The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing " -- Edmund Burke And as far as Google goes, I think it would be easy to rationalize that (if I was a Google member) I have access to better tools than most to make a decision (more information).

jshowa3 7y ago

In most states, political discussion in the work place is considered illegal. California has some odd laws though that protect people from this.

larvaetron 7y ago
In which states? I've never heard of an instance where any state legislature passed a rule that forbids employees from discussing politics. I'm surprised there wouldn't be massive outrage over it.
SamReidHughes 7y ago
Two odd laws, actually. The federal and state constitutions.
MFLoon 7y ago
I think you're confused. It's definitely not illegal in any state to have informal political discussions with coworkers. Maybe what you're referring to is that it's illegal for employers to tell employees to vote a certain a way or retaliate against them for holding certain political views.
- jshowa3 7y ago
  Only in some states is this legally protected. If a private company allows it, then there is no problem. However, most private companies don't allow political discussion and it's not illegal to control this unless you live in certain states, California being one of them. Explanation in detail here: https://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/can-employers-discriminate-based-on-political-beliefs-or-affiliation.html https://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/can-employers-discri...
jshowa3 7y ago
Let me make my statement a little bit more clear. There is no federal law that prevents employer discrimination based on political beliefs. There are some states, specifically California in this case, that prevent employers from discrimination based on political activities and/or affiliations. However, most states prevent employers from controlling political activities outside of work The First Amendment does not apply to private institutions, only public ones. Private institutions can outright ban political discussion with no repercussions and cannot be liable for termination on the grounds of political beliefs expressed within the workplace sans some states. So while it isn't "illegal", it can be restricted within private companies.

techrich 7y ago

Sounds like children to me.

tunesmith 7y ago

Some people can handle civil discussion with people of differing values, and some people can't. I wonder what the difference is, I mean beyond just painting someone who can't as a jerk. I think it has to do with learned skills of emotional self-regulation... someone with those skills is better able to hold their perspective while allowing that of another. But how does one learn that? It might have to do with safety. I suspect that the people that are better able to have those kind of civil discussions have had good behavior modeled to them in the past, that has increased their own sense of safety, like from someone else in a position of power that has demonstrably respected their opinion even when they held different values. Could that be the krux of it, that most "uncivil behavior" in this realm is from people that are reacting from a sense of danger, like that if they meet a person with differing values they automatically believe they are being threatened? (Recognizing that sometimes that belief is correct.) I also wonder if there's a universal central reason behind why it is important to understand someone else's argument if their conclusion differs than yours.

gm678 7y ago
While I absolutely agree that there are people of all political beliefs who have major problems with remaining civil, I think we sometimes have an unfair standard. If someone is dealing with people who just want to spread hate and have no interest in having an open-minded discussion or ever changing their views, and that person then betrays even a hint of frustration, they are often immediately slammed for becoming impolite and uncivil. (Note: I'm not saying there's no line here, just that I believe the line is sometimes drawn in the wrong place). However, the person being toxic is often not criticized at all because they were spreading their hateful views "politely," if such a thing is possible. So while I believe there is nothing to be gained from getting angry in a political discussion, I do think we should give people a bit of a break if they understandably become frustrated when dealing with actual white nationalists/neo-Nazis/incels saying rape should be legal/etc.
- lagadu 7y ago
  It boils down to whether they believe that all ideas are worth having, discussing about and of equal value to a "free" society and should therefore be openly discussed or whether only their specific subset of ideas are allowed and everything else thought-crime. Hell, believe it or not, I've heard people say that it should be illegal to be fascist for example. Of course these people should be ridiculed.

pkaye 7y ago

What has your experience been in places outside of Google? I've worked in a couple of non-FAANG companies over the years and politics never enters into the conversation. People just agree not to discuss controversial political stuff except may out over a beer or something.

avocado4 7y ago

The toxic echo chamber was one of the worst things about working at Google. The pinnacle was being peer forced to walk out during one of the recent outrage events - how can you possibly be the only person on the team to not walk out? To make things worse, you find yourself stuck in public expected to chant anti-capitalist, anti-police, and anti-male slurs during what was supposed to be a #MeToo march, which felt absolutely gross. The fact that they are starting to crack down on this toxic environment is long overdue. My guess is that they are starting to see tangible attrition of top performers (who happen to be predominantly white & asian males) quoting this as a reason to leave, which threatens their existence. Hence the change.

heroHACK17 7y ago

> What seems to be happening a lot lately is that politics are spilling over into large, global mailing lists which target a whole geographic region, so many people get involved, and when a company has 200k employees and contractors, you will find some outliers in there who will pick nasty fights. Really good point here. One could argue the same for society as a whole - not just companies with global mailing lists.

ljm 7y ago

That seems largely fair enough. I’ve pushed back before on conversations that make an assumption about the audience, suggesting to redirect them to the place where people have explicitly opted into that kind of stuff. In that sense it’s not really about the politics, it’s just seeing the world outside of your own. In almost every other case we’re okay with this. In a lot of contexts irrelevant discussion is called ‘taking it offline’.

grumpy8 7y ago

>> It's a bit disappointing to hear, since I personally enjoyed the occasional, honest discussion with smart people That can still happen, maybe just not on a huge mailing list? :p

cosmodisk 7y ago

I'd say the same would happen in pretty much every other company. Political discussions are very hard to have outside work and it is 10 times worse at it. Most of the time it's either echo chamber or free ride for all without any considerations.

t34543 7y ago

Discussing politics at work is a huge liability. With the recent surge of outrage culture I’m not willing to put my job on the line to prove a point. I engage in discussion, but only online and anonymously.

Aqua 7y ago
This doesn't sound like freedom, look what the western society turned into. Interesting times we live in.
- seattle_spring 7y ago
  Similar argument to people that think they should be allowed to smoke anywhere. I can't stand people that talk about politics. It's worse noise pollution than that scene from Dumb and Dumber (hey Lloyd, want to hear the most annoying sound in the world?) I'm sorry, but I don't think having to listen to co-workers ram their ill-thought-out opinion down my throat is "freedom."
foolrush 7y ago
Your ability to create the ontology of “What is political” versus “What is not political” classification is one of privilege. “Food isn’t political” is only “not political” for someone who is well fed and not concerned about where their next meal is coming from. Everything is political.